Conventionally, many attempts to produce a superconductive wire by depositing a superconductive layer on a substrate have been proposed. For obtaining a superconductive wire with a desired wire width, there is a method in which a metal substrate having a desired width is prepared by cutting a metal plate by means of, for example, slit processing, an intermediate layer is formed on a surface of the metal substrate and a superconductive layer exhibiting a good crystalline orientation is deposited on a surface of the intermediate layer. There is also a case where an intermediate layer and a superconductive layer are deposited on a metal substrate having a width larger than a desired width and an obtained superconductive wire is made thinner. In this case, the superconductive wire is cut by methods such as laser cutting and slit processing (for example, refer to Patent Document 1).
As an example of laser cutting, with respect to an oxide superconductive conductor with low alternating current loss, oxide having high resistance is formed in thinning grooves formed along a longitudinal direction of the conductor, and laser is irradiated along the thinning grooves for superconductive layers to be formed as a plurality of filament conductors spaced from each other in a width direction of the conductor (for example, refer to Patent Document 2).
The following methods are disclosed as methods for obtaining a superconductive conductor having a desired critical current capacity from thinned superconductive wires: a method in which backsides of metal substrates of a plurality of thinned superconductive wires are joined repeatedly at regular interval onto a base material which has lower flexural rigidity in comparison to that of the superconductive wire (for example, refer to Patent Document 3); a method in which superconductive wires each thinned so as to have a width of 0.48 mm to 1.8 mm is wound spirally around a core wire having an outer diameter ∅ of 1.3 mm to 5 mm without overlapping with each other (for example, refer to Patent Document 4); and a method in which surfaces of superconductive wires are processed by slit processing so as to each have a width of 0.5 to 2.0 mm and are covered with silver, the superconductive wires are laminated with each other in the vertical direction and thickly plated with copper such that a cross-sectional round shape superconductive conductor is formed (for example, refer to Patent Document 5).